And away sped the deceitful damsel, on nefarious schemes intent, to play tennis with her cousin George, who had responded with celerity to her summons. She was really improving with a good deal of rapidity. She had been a sad romp in her day, and every prank of her tomboy girlhood stood her in good stead now. Every fence and tree she had climbed, to the unspeakable horror and scandal of elderly spinster aunts, every game of ball for which she had been lectured by an eminently proper governess, every stolen fishing-expedition and hoydenish race whose improprieties my lady buried with overwhelming scorn in the oblivion of the past, had been a preparation for the struggle into which she now threw herself with the whole force of mind and body. Her cousin George Snow, who was sufficiently fond of his mischievous cousin, and duly grateful for her supposed good offices in arranging the difficulties between himself and Dora, was an invaluable ally. He was taken into full confidence, and embraced the project most heartily. Granton was a right nice fellow, he admitted, but it certainly would not hurt him to be taken down a peg. Snow had just returned from England, where he had seen some of the finest tennis-players perform. "You play too near the net," he said. "All American players do. Play well back, and above everything, put all your force into the return." "But I shall send the ball out of the court," Betty protested. "You mustn't. Drive it down as hard as ever you can. Strength--or rather swiftness--tells; if your service is swift enough it is worth all the fancy cuts in the world. The Renshaws make half their points by volleying from the service-line, and the rest by swift service." "Swiftness is the word," Betty returned gayly. "Anything more?" "Get used to striking back-handed; don't try to turn your thumb down; make a business of an out-and-out back-handed, wrong-side-of-the-racquet stroke." How sound all this advice was, tennis players may determine for themselves; but it certainly served its purpose well. Betty was a promising pupil. Morning, noon, and night she played, working with an assiduity which nearly fagged her cousin out. "You are plucky, Betty," he declared one day. "I'm afraid for my own laurels. And by the way, am I to be allowed to be present at this great tournament in which you are to cover yourself and your sex with glory?" "Oh, yes; you are to challenge Mr. Granton if he beats me,--though he sha'n't! Anybody can challenge the winner, you know. That's a provision I had put in myself to cover my own case." "Poor Granton!" George laughed. "Little does he dream of the awful humiliation in store for him." Betty set her lips together and nodded her head in a determined way. "George," she declared, with tragic earnestness, "if I get beaten I shall go straight home and die of--" "Baffled stubbornness," interpolated her cousin. "Thwarted vengeance," suggested Dora.